How To Transfer Time Machine Backup to New Drive

Yes, I've tried repairing it a number of times, without success. The drive is readable, though. I've been able to copy all of my non-TM backups to another drive. I've just not been able to copy the TM folder. I first tried using ditto. ditto seemed to properly copy the hard links--vs the full referenced files--but didn't seem to copy the extended attributes properly. Any suggestions on other copy utilities? rsync would probably run out of memory trying to decide what to do (at least that's what appeared to happen). And I'm not sure if cp handles hard links and extended attributes properly. I guess I could do an experiment... My last resort is to simply keep the drive around and use it for recovery, if needed. Seems like a real waste of a nice 1.5TB drive, though.

Seems like a great opportunity for someone to write a utility that properly copies TM backups!

Thanks for the response, Pondini.

Kevin H C Monahan wrote:
Yes, I've tried repairing it a number of times, without success.

That means they're corrupted, and you're not going to be able to copy them successfully.

As posted earlier, +Disk Warrior 4.2+ might be able to fix them, but if they're not fixable, they're not copyable.

And given the structure of TM backups, where everything that looks like a file or folder is actually a hard link, the best you might be able to do is copy a single backup, if you can find one that isn't corrupted, which will convert the hard links into actual files and folders. The result is, of course, no longer a TM backup, and TM cannot continue to do backups to it.

Seems like a great opportunity for someone to write a utility that properly copies TM backups!

There are several, including the Restore tab of Disk Utility, the Snow Leopard Finder (but not the Leopard Finder), and SuperDuper! But yours are corrupted. Even if something managed to act like it copied them, do you really want backups that you know are corrupted somewhere, somehow?

Good point about copying a backup that might be corrupted. Hadn't gotten to that yet!

After some experimenting I discovered that cp does not copy hard links. I could have saved the experiment time by reading to the bottom of the man page but maybe I'll remember it, having gone through the effort. I did discover that pax does preserve hard links and extended attributes in a copy (using the -rw option). Since I don't need to move my laptop for a while I'm going to try this.

I originally purchased an IcyDock external enclosure that supports RAID 1 for two enclosed hard drives. My original desire was to make sure my backups were actually on two separate hard drives. I just didn't consider that something would corrupt the directory and have that corruption written to both drives, in the RAID 1 configuration. I've since changed the enclosure to JBOD and reformatted one of the hard drives. Once I recover what I can from the second (corrupted) hard dive to this one I'll start doing TM backups to one drive and then do a weekly mirror to the second drive.

I do understand that SL's Finder will properly copy hard liked files but as you say, with the corruption on my drive this is not working. I've used Disk Utility's Restore function but it only works on a complete hard drive/partition, not individual directories (I believe). This is in fact how I migrated an earlier TM backup to a new, larger hard drive. I've not used SuperDuper.

Again, thanks for the comments and suggestions.

I am just copying a 240GB TM backup with Finder in Snowleopard to a new disk. Takes about 8h. The bad thing is that Locum takes up 3GB of real memory (of my 4GB). Which makes the computer behave very slow at times.

sudo pax did not work for me to copy the files, but that probably was because permissions were disabled on the target drive. Finder politely reminded me to enable them (and that before even starting the job! -nice)

I guess I will be done in 5h ... 😟

Message was edited by: katzlbt

Kevin H C Monahan wrote:
. . .
I've used Disk Utility's Restore function but it only works on a complete hard drive/partition, not individual directories (I believe).

Correct.

I am not a Mac expert. I get the impression from this thread that I cannot just attach my TimeMachine USB drive to my new/replacement iMac and copy over my personal documents. Is that true? If it is true, what should a relative novice like me do to recover files from a TimeMachine backup?

I've exchanged a very recently purchased iMac for the new model and just want to get my files back. I'm not coerned about recovering the apps becuause they are easily reinstalled.

Thanks.

Steve Edelstein wrote:
I am not a Mac expert. I get the impression from this thread that I cannot just attach my TimeMachine USB drive to my new/replacement iMac and copy over my personal documents. Is that true?

True. Not only is that more difficult, you'll likely have permissions problems with files copied that way. Never use the Finder on Time Machine backups.

If it is true, what should a relative novice like me do to recover files from a TimeMachine backup?

I've exchanged a very recently purchased iMac for the new model and just want to get my files back. I'm not coerned about recovering the apps becuause they are easily reinstalled.

The best way is, when you first start up the new Mac, the +Setup Assistant+ will ask if you already have a Mac, and allow you to "transfer" settings, users, apps, and/or files either directly from it, or it's Time Machine backups. Just say "yes" to all the options.

In most cases, that's all you have to do. Your new Mac will have everything the old one did. In fact, when you re-start, any (non-browser) windows that were open when you did the last backup will probably open in exactly the same place, with exactly the same contents!

You may have to re-enter some 3rd-party serial numbers or purchase keys, and in a very few cases of large and complex 3rd-party apps, that used installers and put files in unusual places, you may have to reinstall them to get everything in the right places.

For other Time Machine questions or issues, you might want to review these:

Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Apple - Support - Mac OSX v10.5 Leopard Time Machine

and perhaps browse the Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.

Pondini--thanks for the help. Wish me luck.

You're entirely welcome. Should be a piece of cake!

Pondini--the restore from TimeMachine worked like a charm. So easy 🙂 Just like you said, I was prompted to do restore a when I first started the new iMac. I said yes and it did it. Thanks again.

My transfer of a 240GB backup to a new smaller disk worked with Finder.app on Snowleopard.

It took 8h. At last I could not touch the computer as it would start trashing for 15 min before reacting to any action and it would resume backup not before 30 minutes of trashing. So better do it over night (until Apple fixes the memory leaks in Locum). Transfer with Disk Utility fails if the new backup volume is smaller in size than the old, or if you just want to copy some computers inside the volume.